Holotropic Breathwork

I’ve always been interested in altered states of consciousness, even before I knew how to articulate it. The naked feeling is that there is always something more, a bottom floor to reality accessible by the human mind.

Jung called this the universal unconscious, and he recognized it in native cultures and Shamanic traditions. I go somewhat beyond this. Whereas archetypal symbols apprehended in a trance state that bind the individual to a tribal identity through rituals involving drugs, pain, feats of endurance, I envisioned entering such a state of consciousness through merely willing it.

What if you could induce the most profound states of consciousness, entheogenic states, by merely thinking them into being? The realm of conceptual possibilities on the table is greatly expanded in our own time. We are capable of more. We understand more. The most formidable barriers we come up against are always that which we comfortably reside in that define the current zeitgeist. We groupthink the unknown future into terrifying dystopian cocktails, and assume away the possibility of expanding conceptual space to truly brush upon something original on an individualistic basis.

Revolutionary thought is not born for its own sake. Often revolutionary thought is confused with raveous, egoic contrarianism, or untempered angst. Those who try to be original fail in their first intent with doing something for the sake of originality. As if no one has tried that before. What is the sum of the wasted caloric energy of the collective brains striving in vain for an original thought? This drive for originality, i think, is the unconscious, unawakened will to transcendence that is the defining characteristic of consciousness for human beings. Truly revolutionary though merely is, apropos, born of a visionary capacity in an individual, and if enacted correctly, enriches the world we live in by spurring on our prodigious evolutionary lineage as curious, restless creatures.

I think I have stumbled upon my own vision, a cornerstone of transcendence and biohacking. Alas, It was thought of before I thought of it! I still savor with pride the fact that I had the maturity to recognize it in the form that I did so early. I am stung that it took me 14 years of searching to find the physical analog to my thought.